COMPARED to the Carters – former Backstreet Boy Nick Carter, brother Aaron and their three sisters – the Osbournes look suspiciously wholesome.

The unlikely stars of E!’s “House of Carters,” which started last week, are like no other family you can see on TV.

Nick, 26, Aaron, 19, and their sisters – BJ (Bobbie Jean), 24, Leslie, 20, and Angel, also 19 and Aaron’s twin – bicker and cry, fight and make up and then pull the emotional skin off each other.

They have spent years without talking to each other – the end result of their parents’ ugly divorce, a brutal custody battle and a legal flap which climaxed with Aaron, then 16, suing his mother for legal emancipation after accusing her of stealing $100,000 from him.

You could call them “The Brady Bunch” on crack – though it might be unkind. More than one Carter has been struggling with substance abuse over the years. (A Google search will quickly produce mugshots from Nick’s and BJ’s most-recent DUI arrests.) In an upcoming episode Angel and BJ hide a bag of dog poo in Leslie’s bed – payback for some slight delivered during one of her violent mood swings.

In another, when Aaron is badly injured in a surfing accident, his family cries over him while he recovers in the hospital – and then screams at him when he is well enough to be discharged.

For the show, Nick and his siblings spent eight weeks together living under the same roof for the first time since they were little kids.

Nick is behind the reunion idea and served as executive producer of the series.

“The first step to healing yourself, to getting better is admitting there’s a problem,” Nick told The Post. “So we’re [bleeping] dysfunctional, we have problems.

“I bet there are a ton of families out there that have the same issues,” he says.

Since its debut, the show has been drawing a respectable 1.2 million viewers – very good for E! – with new episodes, Fridays at 9 p.m.

Even before the show got started officially, the Cater brothers found themselves in trouble.

Aaron let it slip – to The Post’s Page Six – that his brother had slept with pop-star Ashlee Simpson, Jessica’s younger sister.

She denied it, and Nick apologized on Ryan Seacrest’s show.

“This was kind of one of those things that I wanted to keep under wraps,” he told Seacrest.

“My brother let the cat out of the bag . . . I do apologize because Ashlee is a good girl.

“I don’t feel I can be better unless I confess,” he explained last week.

“The truth is the truth. I don’t mind letting these things off my chest because that’s what this show is about – coming clean with everything.

“I feel like that is a big problem with Hollywood and what’s going on with these people,” says Nick, who – along with Aaron – has been romantically linked with a boatlaod of starlets, including Lindsey Lohan, Hillary Duff and Paris Hilton (both brothers).

“They hold all these secrets and live behind all these lies and now it’s becoming visible to people [meaning, fans], and they’re sick of it.” Now that taping is done, says Nick, the family sees each other all the time, though the girls live separately from Aaron and Nick. They’ve reconnected, he says.